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Pope's Freed Attacker Does Not Check in With Turkish Police

ISTANBUL, Jan. 14 - Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate John Paul II in 1981, has not made required daily check-ins with the Istanbul police since his release from a Turkish prison on Thursday.

Mr. Agca, 48, was told to report daily to the station in Istanbul until doctors determined if he was fit to fulfill mandatory military service.

Mr. Agca's lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag, told the Anatolia news agency on Saturday that he did not believe Mr. Agca had to report to the police station, because he had applied years ago to pay in place of military service. Turks who can prove long-term residence outside the country can apply for such waivers.

Mr. Agca (pronounced AH-jah) spent 19 years in Italian jails for his attempt on John Paul's life.

"Mr. Agca has applied to authorities to pay for his military term some six or seven years ago," Mr. Demirbag was quoted as saying. The news agency said he was interviewed in his office in Istanbul. "We're tracing his petition since he can not remember the exact date of his application, and we informed the military authorities accordingly." He said Mr. Agca remained in Turkey. An Interior Ministry official said that the matter was before military authorities and that unless the army requested Mr. Agca's arrest as a draft dodger, security forces had no reason to track him down.

Mr. Agca was associated with Turkish ultranationalist groups and the Turkish criminal underworld in the late 1970's. In the months before his death, Mr. Ipekci wrote columns attacking far-right groups and suggesting that drug traffickers were working with high-ranking security officers.

These links have prompted speculation that Mr. Agca's release this week might have been arranged by an illegal network with strong nationalist affiliations.

"They have helped him escape from a fortresslike military prison after he was jailed for murdering Ipekci and now made his release possible," said Baskin Oran, a political science professor at Ankara University. "With Agca's release, this network is now trying to prove that they still exist." Some Italian critics involved in the investigation of the papal assassination attempt have suggested that Mr. Agca's life could be in danger. Mr. Agca, during one of more than 120 interrogations over the years, blamed the Soviet K.G.B. and Bulgarian intelligence agency for organizing the assassination attempt but later retracted this information, frustrating Italian investigators trying to prove such a link.